Paying The Price
by autumn midnights
Summary: He regrets not being able to save her. He's just not sure if he even could have done so, or if she was so far gone that his attempts wouldn't have mattered. Daphne Greengrass is dead, and Blaise Zabini doesn't know what to do with himself anymore. Blaise-centric. Complete. Warnings for character death, addiction, and mentions of torture.


_Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter; if I did, things would be different. I also don't own the song lyrics that inspired this piece; that credit goes to the creators of Les Miserables._

_Author's Note: Written for the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition. I had to choose between two song lyric prompts, and I chose 'And so it must be, for so it is written on the doorway to paradise, that those who falter and those who fail must pay the price' (from the song 'Stars', from Les Mis). I would also like to mention, for readers of my other stories, that this fic is not compliant with my general headcanon._

_Warning: character death, addiction (to potions), mentions of torture._

* * *

Blaise regretted not being able to save her.

He didn't even know if he would have been able to. He didn't know if she had been so far gone that his presence - his attempt at comfort - even would have mattered. Daphne hadn't been herself since the last year of Hogwarts. The Carrows had been hard on her; after her original refusal to participate in detentions, they had tortured her until she had agreed to be the one holding the wand. Her first victim had been her own sister, and she was never the same. He had seen her, sneaking out in the middle of the night to raid Madam Pomfrey's Potions cabinet. She was addicted to a few different potions. Even after Hogwarts, she was addicted to them, in what Blaise assumed was a futile attempt to erase the memories of the terrible things she had done.

Blaise had always been friendly with Daphne, since the beginning of Hogwarts. She was interesting, in his mind - wild and a little unhinged at times, but better company than most of the others. He had seen what she went through that year, but he hadn't the faintest idea of how to save her, how to bring his Daphne back. And after the Dark Lord fell, after they were out of Hogwarts, she had practically lived at his house, afraid to admit to her parents what she had become. In a way, he felt responsible for her.

And now, she was dead.

If it had been anybody else, he wouldn't have cared so much. He had always known that actions had consequences. Yes, it was the way of a Slytherin to weasel out of those consequences, but they would no doubt be there. There was always a price to pay when bad things happened. If it had been anybody else, he wouldn't have been surprised at what happened - after all, being addicted to a few different things - being addicted to _anything _- was a recipe for disaster. Daphne had overdosed on a combination of potions, and, if it had been a random person, Blaise wouldn't have been surprised.

This wasn't a random person, though, and Blaise - despite trying not to - cared. He cared about Daphne. He didn't want her to have to pay the price for her actions. Just because she had faltered didn't mean she was a bad person. Just because she had raised a wand to other students didn't mean that she deserved to die at nineteen. Which one of the Slytherins - the ones old enough to cast such a curse - hadn't? They all had done it, in order to save their own skins; some of them, like Daphne, just took more convincing than others.

He couldn't shake the memory of her lying there on the floor of her bedroom, of him coming in and seeing her like that. He remembered clearly why he had gone in; it had been a stupid thing, him wanting to remind her that Tracey was coming over the next day to see her. She hadn't responded when he said her name, and so he had turned the light on and seen her prone figure on the ground, not moving.

Nineteen years old. Dead from an overdose on potions.

He missed her. It had only been a few days since the funeral, and the flat felt so empty without her. After seventh year, she hadn't been a particularly loud person, but her presence was always there, a thin, petite girl huddled on the couch beside Blaise, eating at the table with him, sleeping in the bedroom right next to his. What would happen now? What would happen to him, without Daphne to talk to, without her reading beside him? And what had happened to her? Had she truly gone to a better place, or had her actions prevented that from happening?

He slammed his head back against the chair, trying to get those thoughts out of his head. Surely there was something else he could focus on. Surely he didn't have to stay there for days, missing her, wishing her back. He felt her absence like a hole in his heart, and he didn't know what to do about it. He hadn't lost anybody before. None of his mother's husbands had been around long enough for him to grow attached to them, and the only Slytherin in his year that had died - Crabbe - wasn't what Blaise would call a friend. He had known people that died - everyone at Hogwarts did - but none of them were close to him.

They were supposed to be safe. All of them. The war against the Dark Lord was over, and the world was supposed to be - the world _was _- peaceful. There was supposed to be no more death in their generation. They were supposed to live for a hundred-odd more years, growing old, dying calmly in their sleep. They weren't supposed to die at nineteen, none of them.

He stood up, pacing around, trying to clear his mind, but it was impossible to do so. It was still unfathomable to him that Daphne was dead. It felt so wrong for her to be dead. In a way, hadn't she been a better person than the rest of them? She had been the one to refuse to help the Carrows, the one that needed a torture session with both of them before she agreed to hurt other students. She had been the one to be so torn up about what she did, the one who felt so guilty that she needed to take potions to ease her pain.

The rest of them were all fine. Not necessarily happy and cheery, but fine.

Didn't that make her a better person, then? That she hadn't been able to exist normally after doing what she did? Blaise thought so, and in the same vein, he thought it was desperately unfair that she - the nice one, the good one - had died so young.

He wished that something was different, that he could change something, but now there was no going back. Daphne was gone - hopefully to a better place, although Blaise had no idea - and nothing he could ever do would change that.

That hurt him more than anything else.


End file.
